For a quick take on my focus in matters of STEM education, take a look at an op-ed I wrote that appears in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer. I hope the piece will call attention to a couple of issues that don’t often make it into discussions of STEM equity. First, I want to stress that we could spend much more money on programs for many more students, to vastly enlarge the number of young people who have a chance to move from weaker highschools into full-fledged STEM degree programs.
But I also want to ask why STEM interventions for disadvantaged communities of students have remained relatively small, so I want to think long and hard about the sheer stubbornness of our familiar ideas about talent. Why is it so hard for us to shake the feeling that there is such a thing in certain individuals as “true” math or science ability, that will surface even in the most disadvantaged educational circumstances? That kind of intuitive but deeply mistaken idea can undermine reform in powerful ways. It makes the small scale of STEM programs in poorer communities seem reasonable. Do our presumptions of racial, gender, and other innate differences keep giving that idea its life? Seems so…